pentagon spokesman told fox this was totally done by the book that this was about saving money and not about political drama. lou? >> thank you very much, ed henry, chief white house fox news cor responsibility. the first guest attests firsthand to the lack of urgency and accountability in washington. concerning the sequester, former senator scott brown, a fox news cricketer, great to have you with us. >> great to be on, lou. lou: turn to the hoer row show the president is trodding out. seemingly every person in the administration given the opportunity to go out in front of cameras to scare the american people. what do you think of it? >> well, it's a broken record strategy. it's something i heard the last three years. they put something forth, give it a great title, but when you read the bill, it's not what it's moment to be. we saw sequestering if you remember because we tried to avoid default and make sure the credit rating agencies didn't lower the credit rating, came up with what they considered draconian cuts, harry reid and mitch mcconnell said there's a select committee that wi

image. >> running the pentagon is a hard job. it is one of the largest workforces in the world. there are strong centers of p power in that building. none of that has been litigated at all. i know they talked to al jazeera once. do i care if he is running the pentagon, as far as i can tell no one has done much in congress to sort that out. >>. >> that is not the person who takes the orders from the white house or decides what our relationship is with a foreign country. that is what they made the hearing about. even their fixation about benghazi is located in state. that has nothing to do with this job either. i totally agree. i liked the fact that he was an enlisted man and i fought in vietnam. it hasn't been about him at all. >> thank you both for joining me tonight. >> i will be joined ip rebuttal by someone who is on the nra's enemy's list. in the rewrite tonight. if there was no such thing as democrats. if republicans ruled the world would theyer are raise taxes? >> well there is a place where democrats don't exist and republicans today voted to raise taxes big time and that is in

president's choice to run the pentagon. as gop senators demand more answers about the benghazi terror attack, white house charges they are playing politics with national security. we talk with the man leading the call for more information, senator lindsey graham. his tee party response to the state of the union speech was critical to both the president and the gop. we will ask senator rand paul what he thinks of the obama agenda as well as republican policy. also, it is less than two weeks until big automatic spending cuts kick in. we will ask the sunday panel will congress will reach a deal before the sequester deadline. and outraged our power player of the week helps the senate make history by keeping track of history. all right now on "fox news sunday." >> chris: and hello again from fox news in washington. senate republicans made history this week, blocking a nominee for defense is secretary for the first time ever. they are demanding more information about the nominee former senator chuck hagel and about the benghazi terror attack. joining me now one of the senators leading the c

wrong. national security correspondent jennifer griffin tells us what that means. >> the pentagon using misleading figures about the war in afghanistan and how well it is going. >> this is a regrettable error indy the base system that was discovered in a routine quality check. we are making the appropriate adjustments. the assessment is positive. >> the u.s. -led military coalition in afghanistan incorrectly reported a decline in taliban attacks last year. reporting attacks were down by 7%. a fact that drove the obama administration narrative the strategy was working allowing u.s. troops to come home early. >> i don't know of any overt action to cook the books if you will in afghanistan. but everyone i talk to testifies to a subtle pressure. on the part of commanders in the field to shape the narrative in afghanistan as positively as they can. >> the coalition corrected the "clerical errors" removing without explanation the monthly reports from last year on trends in security and violence. it now turns out that the number of taliban attacks in 2012 was flat compared to 2011. did n

guns actually holding the gun. >> moving on the military there is more oversight at the pentagon. >> i think the advantage is it becomes much more transparent. compelling true stories. >> jack, how old are you? >> nine. >> this is what 27 tons of marijuana looks like. (vo) with award winning documentaries that take you inside the headlines, way inside. (vo) from the underworld, to the world of privilege. >> everyone in michael jackson's life was out to use him. (vo) no one brings you more documentaries that are real, gripping, current. [ ♪ music ♪ ] >> cenk: welcome book "the young turks." michael shure here in here with ana kasparian and michael hastings. michael is the author of "panic "panic 2012" what may be perhaps is barack obama's final campaign. one of the news items that we've been spending time on, i know michael hastings has spent a lot of time on it as well are the drone attacks that the u.s. has been waging mostly in the middle east and north africa. leon panetta in response to an u.n. probe into those drone strikes, the legality of them, the affects of them, wha

. >> not only should the sequester stand. >> i so badly want to cut all of the fat out of the pentagon that i'm willing to do this. we are never again going to get to cut the pentagon back. the pentagon hasn't had any significant cuts for 30 years. >> josh green, is that the political equivalent of a liger, a lion and tiger combined to make an animal we have never seen before. rand paul and howard dean agreeing that the sequester should go through because, hey, defense -- >> hadn't occurred to me in quite those terms, but, yes, i suppose it could be a liger. >> there have always been contingent of liberal democrats that have wanted to go after the pentagon because its budget has grown enormously since 9/11. what you haven't had is a kind of republican analog. there have been a few people here, walter jones, congressman in north carolina, ron paul, in fact, was a big advocate of this, but only in the last couple of years, and really only in the last 18 months since the sequester cuts have loomed have you seen this tension between small government anti-tax republicans and pro-defense rep

pentagon chief will stop at nothing. they're trying to slow the process of his confirmation, anything to give them time to find something to bring the man down. question, who are they try king to bring down? is it president obama's pick for secretary of defense? or is it the man the american people have chosen? is it about a confirmation or a desperate push to undermine the president's second term. listen to those attacking senator hagel and you'll hear the yelps of pain, this motley crew of neocons and the sun belt feel. what they hate, despise, really, is the fact that now in the history books, the american people voting in great numbers reject their war-reich jinglistic notions of what america stands for. their problem is with america's choice of who it wants to be president. who it wants to sign. and what we should be doing in this world. obama works for peace. he works hard for it. this crowd has other ideas. and that's "hardball" for now. happy valentine's, everybody. what a day. and thanks for being with us tonight. "politics nation" with al sharpton starts right now. >> thanks, c

the pentagon reform needs to be on the table that we have more nuclear weapons than we need in the 21st century. those are all very mainstream views among national security experts and the american people at large. what is going on here is you have some republicans not trying to redefine the mainstream out from under the american people. >> john: i can't help but think that john mccain and chuck hagel once voted for donald rumsfeld not long ago. now you spent time on the campaign. what was their relationship then. >> the relationship was closer--it was close really from the beginning. back in the 1999 when i was a correspondent for a network we won't name in which john mccain and chuck hagel and then secretary cohen, a bunk of us reporters went to brussels. there was john mccain chatting with the brass and he would make time for chuck hagel. he said give time to my friend chuck hagel who was a new senator who we thought didn't know anything about foreign policy. now he's the first to endorse mccain's candidacy against george w. bush. they're close at the beginning of the war and th

pentagon chief will stop at nothing. they're trying to slow the process of his confirmation, anything to give them time to find something to bring the man down. question, who are they try king to bring down? is it president obama's pick for secretary of defense? or is it the man the american people have chosen? is it about a confirmation or a desperate push to undermine the president's second term. listen to those attacking senator hagel and you'll hear the yelps of pain, this motley crew of neocons and the sun belt feel. what they hate, despise, really, is the fact that now in the history books, the american people voting in great numbers reject their war-reich jinglistic notions of what america stands for. their problem is with america's choice of who it wants to be president. who it wants to sign. and what we should be doing in this world. obama works for peace. he works hard for it. this crowd has other ideas. and that's "hardball" for now. happy valentine's, everybody. what a day. and thanks for being with us tonight. "the ed show" with ed schultz starts right now. >>> good evening,

pentagon chief will stop at nothing. they're out there beating the bushes right now for anything that will slow the process of his confirmation, anything that will give them more time to find something they can build enough on to bring the man down. question. who are they trying to bring down? is it president obama's pick for secretary of defense? or is it the man the american people have chosen? is it about a confirmation or a desperate push to undermine the president's second term? listen to those attacking senator hagel, and you hear the yelps of pain this motley crew of neocons and right-wingers from the sun belt feel even though from the american people's choice of last november. what they hate, despise really, is the fact now in the history books that the american people in great numbers reject their war-like jingoistic notions of what america stands for. their problem is not with obama's choice for a cabinet appointment. their problem is with america's choice of who it wants to be president, who it wants deciding what we should be doing in this world. obama works for peace. he

defense secretary was held up until the current pentagon chief agreed to answer questions about last september's terrorist attack in libya. today a senate panel got to question leon panetta, national security correspondent jennifer griffin tells us not everyone was satisfied with what they heard. >> based on time, distance and alert posture -- they wouldn't have gotten there on time. >> time, distance, the lack of an adequate warning, it takes hours to be able to respond. >> defense secretary leon panetta and joint chiefs chairman general martin dempsey explained why the military couldn't do more to save the lives of ambassador chris stevens, sean smith, tyrone woods and glenn dougherty in benghazi on september 11. >> united states military, as i've said, is not and frankly should not be a 911 service capable of arriving on the scene within minutes to every possible contingency around the world. >> republican senators weren't satisfied. >> did you know how long the attack was going to last, secretary panetta? >> no idea. >> well, it could have lasted for two days. any airplane launch

i reason we should is we will never in our lifetime see an opportunity to cut the pentagon like this. we've had fat in the pentagon for 30 years. nobody's done a damn thing about it. if there's a compromise on sequester, some good things will happen because there are some people that are going to get hurt if we go over the cliff, but we have an opportunity here to cut the most bloated agency in all of government and serious cutting, and i think we ought to take it. >> we could take $45 billion this year out of the military budget. you're okay with that? >> yes, i am. and i think we can do that and we can make it work. you know there, have been tons of programs in the pentagon that the pentagon never wanted. that congresspeople have put in there. >> sure. howard dean, great to have you with us. always. >> thanks. >> appreciate it. wayne lapierre might be one of the greatest hucksters of all time. i'll show you what's behind his paranoia campaign next. tea party backers show a perverse sense of humor by creating a hillary clinton sex tape. david corn broke the story. he joins us o

secretary of state hillary clinton at an awards ceremony at the pentagon with secretary of defense leon panetta. general dempsey there with her holding the award. the first time we have seen hillary clinton since she first left office. first time since her accident. and as you probably noticed in these pictures that we, again, just got in a moment ago, she's not wearing her corrective prism glasses. it appears as though she's able to return wearing her contact lenses. again, hillary clinton receiving an award there at the pentagon just moments ago. we'll continue to watch that and we'll have more right after the break. tely so this is a big deal, our first full team gathering! i wanted to call on a few people. ashley, ashley marshall... here. since we're often all on the move, ashley suggested we use fedex office to hold packages for us. great job. [ applause ] thank you. and on a protocol note, i'd like to talk to tim hill about his tendency to use all caps in emails. [ shouting ] oh i'm sorry guys. ah sometimes the caps lock gets stuck on my keyboard. hey do you wanna get a drink late

but, you know, foreign nations and people in the pentagon can count votes too. we've never had a defense secretary with this many opposing votes. now this is something he can shake off, but it's going to take some time. >> woodruff: that's right. i mean he has the fewest confirming volts of any defense secretary since the job was created. mark thompson, how does that affect his ability to do his job? >> well, it will depend. it will affect it in a big way if he acts as he did in his con for megs hearing which by all accounts he did not do well. conversely, i talked to people in the pentagon. the lower in ranks you go, the more they like this guy. the more they like the sense that an enlisted man is going to run the building. if you can use that as a springboard he's facing immense challenges from sequestration to afghanistan to a nuclear iran but it's an opportunity for him to seize the moment. if he does, people will forget this pretty quickly i think. >> woodruff: what about the sour relations or whatever lingering effect there is from this loud vote of no confidence from repub

nominated to lead the pentagon while we are at war. republicans have never before felt the need to filibuster a cabinet member in the history of the country but apparently now this is the time and this is the guy worth waiting 224 years to spring it on. it has never happened before, but why not now? heck. the white house is not pleased. "today's action runs against both the majority will of the senate and our nation's interest. this waste of time is not without consequence. we have 66,000 men and women deployed in afghanistan, and we need our new secretary of defense to be a part of significant decisions about how we bring that war to a responsible end. next week in brussels, the united states will meet with our allies to talk about the transition in afghanistan at the nato defense ministerial, and our next secretary of defense should be there. for the sake of national security, it's time to stop playing politics with our department of defense and to move beyond the distractions and delay. allow this war hero an up or down vote, and let our troops have the secretary of defense they

disaster in u.s. history, consider this my friends, bp's contracts with the u.s. pentagon doubled since the year it spilled an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil into the gulf of mexico. according to reporting by bloomberg, the company's awards surged to 2.51 billion in the year ended september 30th from $1.04 billion in fiscal 2010. bp's share of the military's petroleum market jumped to 12% from 8.5% during the period. but to be fair, the e.p.a. did finally announce it would temporarily ban the company from winning new government work just this past november, more than two years after the spill. joining me now to assess what this means for bp and for logic itself is 30-year oil industry veteran bob cavnar author of "disaster on the horizon." mr. cavnar, so pleased to you have with us tonight. >> great to be with you. >> john: thank you. what are these contracts actually for sir? can't the defense department just shop somewhere else for fuel? >> well, john, the way that the military -- the entire u.s. government acquires supplies like fuel is through bidding and contracts, larg

here at the pentagon briefing room. there are moments when i thought i was part of the last act of an italian opera. you're not sure exactly when it would end, and when the fat lady would sing. >> for now the only certainty is much more congressional uncertainty. joy, does leon panetta need a shirt that says "i survived a chuck hagel filibuster and all i got was this lousy t-shirt?" just when he thinks it can't get worse, it's actually seemingly gotten worse. >> this is insane. i mean, last night i went through, and i was looking at the george w. bush cabinet nominations. none of which were filibustered. just for fun. just because i knew we were talking about it. his second term cabinet nominations, the majority went through by voice vote. they didn't even bother to take a poll of the senate. people like michael mukaze sailed through and alberto gonzalez, who went to the bedside of john ashcroft when he was the chief guy to demand that this sick man, this man who was on his bed barely lucid sign off on wiarrantless wiretapping. we had bin laden -- not filibuster. i mean, the bottom

who's going to head the pentagon. and let me tell you this, ryan, tell you how blatantly inconsistent and unprecedented this is. he said in 2005 that presidential nominees shouldn't be filibustered. "i think the president is entitled to an up or down that is a simple majority. voter nominations both to his cabinet and to the executive branch and, also, to the judiciary. 2005 up or down vote, nominees for cabinet and judiciary and executive branch. now, he's leading a filibuster, ryan. >> yeah, that easter's exactly . if the republicans want to pick who the cabinet secretaries are, then they have to elect a president. they didn't win the presidential election, therefore, they -- i guess they should be thankful he's picking a republican. john mccain said earlier this is partly about benghazi but it's also about the simple fact that they don't like chuck hagel. they said they don't like him. mccain said you can disagree without being disagreeable and ha hagel is disz agreeable. >> they don't like him, but he was a republican senator. and they've smeared him. you would think this guy is s

something i wanted to examine in the book. >> tanya, the big news is the pentagon changing the rules and saying it would allow women in combat going forward. i've heard and i have read some who have sort of said the facts on the ground already were sort of there, women were on the front line in a lot of ways. i wonder how much do you think this policy change will affect -- how will it affect women serving right now or just sort of a confirmation of how things already were? >> lifting the ban was certainly a confirmation of where the military was already headed. but this is quite significant. it's a historic moment because now women will be able to have many more job opportunities. if you look at the general officers rank in the military, 80% of generals come from the combat arms branches which up until now women have been banned from serving in. only 7% of women are general officers at the flag rank even though they make up almost 15% of the force. >> tanya, one of the unique challenges that you have talked about is the way that women are treated in the military and you said service

withdraw in afghanistan coming to the fore and you need someone in the pentagon doing this. it can be seen as a nuisance in that the president want to be talking about his agenda, which is the gun control, immigration, things that people can get done. you have, of course, this sequester and the ongoing issue of the spending situation and taxes. so i think these are the things that the president wants to be talking about. he's going to be on the road talking about gun control. so the question is, will he have to be talking about this to put the pressure on republicans to get moving on his appointees. >> i want to bring in congresswoman karen bass. >> good morning. >> what do you think the republican motivation is for delaying the nomination? >> i think senator mcclain was perfectly clear when he said that they are still mad when senator hagel gave testimony and was negative towards president bush. i think this is a vendetta. i think this is a holdover from the past and it's making the united states look very bad. what are our allies around the world thinking about us right now? >> well

. they called for smaller reductions in farm subsidies and the pentagon budget, plus a minimum 30% tax on million- dollar incomes. republicans are expected to oppose the measure because of the tax increase. house speaker john boehner said the burden is on president obama to break the deadlock. >> the sequester, i don't like it and no one should like it, but the sequester is there because the president insisted that it be there. where is the president's plan to replace the sequester that he insisted upon? >> sreenivasan: white house officials warned that letting the across-the-board cuts take effect would be disastrous. for his part, the president traveled to decatur, georgia, selling his plan to make pre- school available to all four- year-olds. standing before a group of teachers, he joked that what works with pre-schoolers might work with congress. >> maybe we need to bring the teachers up... ( laughter ) you know, every once in a while have some quiet time. time out. ( laughter ) >> sreenivasan: if the sequester takes effect, it will mean $85 billion in spending reductions over the

and the president can't come up with $1.2 trillion in cuts by march 1st, the pentagon will be hit by a series of cuts worth $500 billion, $700 billion would be cut from other domestic discretionary programs. president obama is warning that that has to stop. >> washington cannot continually operate under a cloud of crisis. that freezes up consumers, it gets businesses worried. we can't afford these self-inflicted wounds. >> work under a cloud of crisis. joining me now, msnbc policy analyst and "washington post" reporter, ezra klein. good to have you here. before i get to the potential impact of sequestration, do you think it's really going to happen or is congress going to reach a deal to stop these cuts? i point out the countdown is on with only so many days to go. >> i think it might happen. they don't seem to have a good way to stop the cuts. i should just say i think it's $500 and $500 billion on domestic and pentagon side. either way, there's not been really anything even near a deal to deal with sequestration, partially because of how it actually got constructed in the first pla